Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2016 (Revised March 2017)

Airbnb in Amsterdam (A)

by Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain

Abstract

In February 2014, Amsterdam became the first city to issue new regulations specifically to allow home sharing. Airbnb's Molly Turner, global head of civic partnerships; her colleagues at the San Francisco–based home sharing platform; and her counterparts in Amsterdam's city leadership now had to make the new rules function well. By the summer of 2014, the question of how exactly to do that remained unsettled. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that Airbnb was negotiating with Amsterdam officials to supplement the new home-sharing rules was not materializing. Turner was hearing that the company’s proposed commitments that spanned education on regulations, enforcement assistance, and tax collection might not be enough to secure what would be Airbnb’s broadest partnership with any city anywhere. Nanette Schippers was Amsterdam’s Advisor on the Sharing Economy in its Innovation Office and its lead at the negotiating table that summer. She was worried by the standstill, too. A primary reason for the impasse in the negotiations was that Amsterdam wanted access to Airbnb’s data in order to enforce the new laws more easily, while Airbnb sought to protect user privacy. For Airbnb, privacy, precedents, and platform principles were at stake. For Amsterdam, it was a matter of making sure that the historic city did not become “Venice, or Florence, or ‘Disneyland’”; that it wasn’t overrun by visitors and that locals weren’t crowded out. Could the two parties now find dry land?

Keywords: public entrepreneurship; innovation; sharing economy; Amsterdam; Airbnb; Molly Turner; regulation; homesharing; tourism; Business and Government; Public-private partnership; Entrepreneurship; Business and Government Relations; Government Administration; Public Sector; City; Tourism Industry; Public Administration Industry; Travel Industry; Netherlands; Europe;

Language: English Format: Print 15 pages EducatorsPurchase

Citation:

Weiss, Mitchell, Emer Moloney, and Vincent Dessain. "Airbnb in Amsterdam (A)." Harvard Business School Case 817-013, October 2016. (Revised March 2017.)

Related Work

  1. Supplement | HBS Case Collection | October 2016

    Airbnb in Amsterdam (B)

    Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain

    In December 2014, Amsterdam and Airbnb announced an MOU to promote responsible home sharing and to simplify the payment of tourist tax for hosts in the city. It was the most comprehensive agreement that Airbnb had with any city in the world. Its final provision read, “The parties trust that theirs will be a fruitful cooperation.” However, both sides were uncertain about how the agreement would be received. Molly Turner, Airbnb’s global head of civic partnerships, and Tanja de Coster, an Airbnb lawyer in Europe, were unsure how Airbnb’s hosts would react—as were their Airbnb colleagues. Laila Frank, who had been an advisor to the Deputy Mayor in Amsterdam, heralded the reputational gains from the agreement for the city, “We were worldwide news. In that way it worked out really well.” But she acknowledged that there were also skeptical points of view. “The only immediate result was the tax agreement, which we were really happy about. But the rest had to be proven.”

    Keywords: public entrepreneurship; innovation; sharing economy; Amsterdam; Airbnb; Molly Turner; regulation; homesharing; tourism; Business and Government; Public-private partnership; Business and Government Relations; Government Administration; Public Sector; City; Urban Development; Tourism Industry; Public Administration Industry; Travel Industry; Netherlands; Europe;

    Citation:

    Weiss, Mitchell, Emer Moloney, and Vincent Dessain. "Airbnb in Amsterdam (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 817-014, October 2016.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsPurchase Related

  2. Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2016 (Revised March 2017)

    Airbnb in Amsterdam (A)

    Mitchell Weiss, Emer Moloney and Vincent Dessain

    In February 2014, Amsterdam became the first city to issue new regulations specifically to allow home sharing. Airbnb's Molly Turner, global head of civic partnerships; her colleagues at the San Francisco–based home sharing platform; and her counterparts in Amsterdam's city leadership now had to make the new rules function well. By the summer of 2014, the question of how exactly to do that remained unsettled. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that Airbnb was negotiating with Amsterdam officials to supplement the new home-sharing rules was not materializing. Turner was hearing that the company’s proposed commitments that spanned education on regulations, enforcement assistance, and tax collection might not be enough to secure what would be Airbnb’s broadest partnership with any city anywhere. Nanette Schippers was Amsterdam’s Advisor on the Sharing Economy in its Innovation Office and its lead at the negotiating table that summer. She was worried by the standstill, too. A primary reason for the impasse in the negotiations was that Amsterdam wanted access to Airbnb’s data in order to enforce the new laws more easily, while Airbnb sought to protect user privacy. For Airbnb, privacy, precedents, and platform principles were at stake. For Amsterdam, it was a matter of making sure that the historic city did not become “Venice, or Florence, or ‘Disneyland’”; that it wasn’t overrun by visitors and that locals weren’t crowded out. Could the two parties now find dry land?

    Keywords: public entrepreneurship; innovation; sharing economy; Amsterdam; Airbnb; Molly Turner; regulation; homesharing; tourism; Business and Government; Public-private partnership; Entrepreneurship; Business and Government Relations; Government Administration; Public Sector; City; Tourism Industry; Public Administration Industry; Travel Industry; Netherlands; Europe;

    Citation:

    Weiss, Mitchell, Emer Moloney, and Vincent Dessain. "Airbnb in Amsterdam (A)." Harvard Business School Case 817-013, October 2016. (Revised March 2017.)  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsPurchase Related

About the Author

Photo
Mitchell B. Weiss
Professor of Management Practice, Richard L. Menschel Faculty Fellow
Entrepreneurial Management

View Profile »
View Publications »

 
Campus Map
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→ Map & Directions
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College